Packing Time: A Kickstarter Update

We are finally on the last leg of the Kickstarter Campaign.  We received the Comic Books from the publisher and they look great.

Leah and I will be packaging the Rewards this weekend.  Your package will be shipped out by Monday.  If you did not get a survey from Kickstarter asking for your address (for those that need to receive rewards via mail) please contact me through Kickstarter.  I still need several backers’ addresses to ship their rewards.

We want to thank everyone for the wonderful support and your patience in getting the Rewards out.  It has been a wonderful experience and an eye opener to the possibility of making this a full time career for my wife and me.

To support this we have:

• 2,800 Twitter followers
• 500 Facebook Fans
• 430 YouTube Subscriber (with 27,000 views!!!)
• And the best friends ever (we consider all of you our friends)

Madman of Magic Kickstarter Update 10

For those backers that are suppose to get a .pdf copy of the comic, they were sent out last week. If you are suppose to get one and you didn’t please email me. No new news on the printer and the timeline on distribution, but I will have all that figured out by Monday.

“Thank you” section

For those backers of $5, $10, and $25 or above please check the last update to make sure your name is on the list, is spelled correctly, and is how you want it to appear in the comic book.

I will need any changes and/or corrections by January 1st.

Reviewers are in on the digital comic book (.pdf version) and people are digging the comic.
Here are the reaction I have received from backers so far.

Madman of Magic #1 update #9

At the bottom of this update is the list of all of those who are in the “Thank You” section.  If you are supposed to be on the list (backers of $10 or more and $5 backers), please check that your name is on the list and spelled correctly.

We are still doing changes to the comic book, but we are very close!

The entire family is helping

Down to 3 printers

Kickstarter Madman of Magic Q&A

I have received a lot of questions surrounding my choices with Kickstarter and the Madman of Magic Comic Book project. I figure instead of answering the same questions over and over again, I will share them here for everyone to read.
If you have a question of your own, leave it in the comment section and I will answer them too.

Question

What do you think of Kickstarter?

Answer

Kickstarter is ideal for projects like mine.  My wife and I don’t have any way to raise funding for investing in this project or, at least in our case, not to cover all of it.  With Kickstarter we can pre-sell and see if people are interested in our work.  It turns out they are interested in our project and in a big way.

Question

Isn’t Kickstarter a scam?

Answer

I guess it depends on how you define scam or who’s projects you fund.  I am not sure what happens if a user doesn’t fulfill his backer’s rewards.  Maybe someone could have a project, collect the money, and run.  I am not sure, but the 3 projects I have funded all seem to be fulfilling their rewards

Kickstarter experience as a backer

Before you launch your Kickstarter campaign, it is important to have an idea of the experience from the side of a backer.

Why you should back a Kickstarter project before you launch your own:

1. You can get a sense of what draws you to a specific project and use what you learned in your campaign to draw in others.
2. You can help trouble shoot problems or explain the process to your friends/family/fans that have questions for you.
3.  Ensure your backers have the best experience possible.

How backing a Kickstarter project helped me

After failing my first Kickstarter campaign I waited 3.5 months before launching my next campaign.  The best thing I did during that time was back 3 other projects.  This was to learn the process of what others were doing and they were projects that I wanted to see created.

The biggest thing I learned was that the funding could be done through existing Amazon accounts and was really easy.  Before backing I did know Amazon did all the financial part of Kickstarter, but I thought Kickstarter had their own credit card payment page.  I found out people can pay using their existing account and this makes backing a project an easier sell to those who worry about sharing their credit card information online.

Emails backers get

Another thing I got to experience was the emails backers get from the process.

The emails backers receive are:

1) THANK YOU for the pledge (received when they initially back project)

Secret to Kickstarter, make a plan!

From my white board

This is my basic plan for Kickstarter. The goal is to get the writing done, then the images, and finishing up with the video. The problem is I wanted to get the project launched by April 1st, so while I did an extradited version of this list, I now need to go back through and fill those that I feel need a little more work.